g
neck out of the jumble, his eyes alight with a new look, and his lifted
upper lip stained with a single little bright carmine spot. The peewit
was dead.

He pivoted upon his shanks and examined the nest. It was empty.

He got to his feet with rapidity, and, in great excitement, dropped his
head and began hunting. In a minute a mottled pebble seemed to get up
under his nose and run. He snapped at it, and it fell upon the grass,
stretching out slowly in death--a baby peewit.

He circled rapidly, stopped, swerved, and, at the canter, took up
another scent. Suddenly, in a tussock of marram, his nose and he
stopped dead. Nothing moved. Then he bit, and a second
buff-and-black-mottled soft body stretched slowly out into the open as
death took it--a second baby peewit. He circled again, fairly racing
now, and so nearly fell over a third pebble come to life that it
scuttled back between his legs; but he spun upon himself like a snake,
and caught it ere it had gone a yard. He snapped again, held it,
dropped it, and another downy, soft, warm chick thing straightened,
horribly and pathetically, in the unpitying sun, and was still--a third
baby peewit.

But there were no more. He hunted around and around for the next ten
minutes, but never struck a trail. Evidently there had been only
three. And all the time father-peewit, who had just come back from
dinner, swooped, and stooped, and dived, and rocketed, and shot down
and around, his wings humming through the still air above as he went
clean mad, and seemed like to break his neck and the polecat's back in
any and every one of his demented abysmal plunges, but somehow never
did quite.

And all the time, also, the polecat, without seeming to take the
slightest notice of him, was watching him out of the corner of his eye,
waiting, hoping for a chance while he hunted.

But this was not intended as an exhibition of "frightfulness," though
the beast had slain far more innocents than he could eat. It was part
of his duty; and though men have accused his kind of being possessed of
a joy of killing, the accusation is by no means proven. And, in any
case, the accused might reply to civilization, "Same to you, sir, and
many hundreds of times more so."

Anyway, he now picked up a young peewit and made for the nearest dike;
then along this, and presently into the water and across to the other
side, swimming strongly and well; then along a smaller dike, hugging
the reed